This is all simple.  Just drop the LUNs from the file server, give them to the cluster and assign them as pass through disk to the guest OS.  Simple…

Except, I kept getting the following errors when I try to do the import:

An online pack already exists.

The operation failed, because an online pack object already exists.

The provider encountered an error while merging two packs.

I mean really…  what does all that mean.  I couldn’t find anything pertinent in my searches, I tried working in Diskpart, and got some of the same errors.

After lots of searches, I couldn’t find anything to help.  So I opened a ticket with Microsoft.  I got a very helpful person who told me that it basically sounds like a driver issue, but he couldn’t say for certain.  He couldn’t find much on it either.

So on a whim, I moved my test LUN from my production file server to another 2003 server.  That worked just fine, so I then moved it from there to the 2008 R2 machine that I had been working with.  That worked just fine.  Weird…

So I checked the driver for the production file server:

and compared that to the other 2003 server:

As you can tell, the culprit seems to be an outdated driver on the current file server.  Seems I don’t keep things as up to date as I should.

https://connect.microsoft.com/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?SiteID=840&DownloadID=22070

Error 219 – The operation cannot complete because the logical drive has a persistent reservation placed on it. Please release the reservation at the host and then retry the operation.

 

Well, maybe I should have told the cluster to go away before I started deleting the storage, but I didn’t so, that seemed to be a bit of a problem.  I did some google searching, and that was very frustrating, because although I did finally find a reference to it, the reference seemed to allude to the necessity of calling IBM support to correct the problem.  If you found this post, and you are having the problem, please be comforted by the fact, that you DON’T have to call for support.  I am running Storage Manager 10 and the latest firmware, and if you go to the Advanced –> Maintenance –> Persistent Reservations… you get this:

and if you click in the “View associated registrations” box it will show you which host/adaptor holds the reservation.  But the really cool part is you can highlight the LUN you want to remove the reservation from and click “Clear”.

We don’t store or report on VMs currently, mainly because we were trying to keep track of total REAL disk used.  VMs often don’t use as much as they think they do, so that would skew the results, as well as the fact that we are reporting on the hosts. 

All of that is the reason that Patrick asked me to come up with some other tool to use for the VMs so I happened to find a few pieces of PowerShell script that I managed to put together to do a pretty good job of providing some of the info we wanted, and I thought I would share that with the 2 people who read my blog. 

$servers = Get-Content servers.txt

#Open Excel and create a new workbook and worksheet
$ExcelSheet=New-Object -comobject Excel.application   
$WorkBook=$ExcelSheet.WorkBooks.add(1)    
$WorkSheet=$WorkBook.WorkSheets.item(1)               

#Header row
$WorkSheet.cells.item(1,1)=”Computer Name”               
$WorkSheet.cells.item(1,2)=”Disk Device ID”              
$WorkSheet.cells.item(1,3)=”Volume Name”                 
$WorkSheet.cells.item(1,4)=”Size (GB)”        
$WorkSheet.cells.item(1,5)=”Free Space (GB)”
$WorkSheet.cells.item(1,6)=”Space Used (GB)”
$WorkSheet.cells.item(1,7)=”Percent Used”

$i=2

ForEach ($ComputerName in $servers)
{   
    echo "Server Name : ", $ComputerName
    $Disks = gwmi –computername $ComputerName win32_logicaldisk -filter "drivetype=3"

    foreach ($Disk in $Disks)
    {
        $Size = "{0:0.0}" -f ($Disk.Size/1GB)
        $FreeSpace = "{0:0.0}" -f ($Disk.FreeSpace/1GB)
        $Used = ([int64]$Disk.size – [int64]$Disk.freespace)
        $SpaceUsed = "{0:0.0}" -f ($Used/1GB)
        $Percent = ($Used * 100.0)/$Disk.Size
        $Percent = "{0:N0}" -f $Percent
               $WorkSheet.cells.item($i,1)=$ComputerName
            $WorkSheet.cells.item($i,2)=$Disk.deviceid
            $WorkSheet.cells.item($i,3)=$Disk.volumename
            $WorkSheet.cells.item($i,4)=$Size
            $WorkSheet.cells.item($i,5)=$FreeSpace
            $WorkSheet.cells.item($i,6)=$SpaceUsed
            $WorkSheet.cells.item($i,7)=$Percent

            $i=$i+1     
    }
}
#Show the results
$ExcelSheet.visible=$true

At Backblaze, we provide unlimited storage to our customers for only $5 per month, so we had to figure out how to store hundreds of petabytes of customer data in a reliable, scalable way—and keep our costs low. After looking at several overpriced commercial solutions, we decided to build our own custom Backblaze Storage Pods: 67 terabyte 4U servers for $7,867.

In this post, we’ll share how to make one of these storage pods, and you’re welcome to use this design. Our hope is that by sharing, others can benefit and, ultimately, refine this concept and send improvements back to us. Evolving and lowering costs is critical to our continuing success at Backblaze.

Petabytes on a budget: How to build cheap cloud storage | Backblaze Blog

What is the memory capacity in GB of human brain?

  Something like 2 Terabytes and you are still going to be very far from the truth. I don’t think that it is possible (yet) to evaluate the capacity of the human brain. The fact is that a person can remember hundreds of movies, songs, books, events from the past, pictures, faces, names, phone numbers, etc., that if all those memories had to be put on a hard drive, terabytes upon terabytes wouldn’t be enough.

A quote from some researchers.

“The human brain contains about 50 billion to 200 billion neurons
(nobody knows how many for sure), each of which interfaces with 1,000
to 100,000 other neurons through 100 trillion (10 14) to 10
quadrillion (10 16) synaptic junctions. Each synapse possesses a
variable firing threshold which is reduced as the neuron is repeatedly
activated. If we assume that the firing threshold at each synapse can
assume 256 distinguishable levels, and if we suppose that there are
20,000 shared synapses per neuron (10,000 per neuron), then the total
information storage capacity of the synapses in the cortex would be of
the order of 500 to 1,000 terabytes. (Of course, if the brain’s
storage of information takes place at a molecular level, then I would
be afraid to hazard a guess regarding how many bytes can be stored in
the brain. One estimate has placed it at about 3.6 X 10 19 bytes.)”

WikiAnswers – What is the memory capacity in GB of human brain